True Love And Happy Endings

I never believed in true love. I always believed that true love was a literary production of writers to give ordinary people a reason to hope and live for. I knew undoubtedly that true love only existed in the pages of a book.

I had seen my grandmother sit in her chair, and read the letters my grandpa wrote to her before their marriage every once in a while, and I used to think how can this be true love? Because true love is about happy endings right? True love is about always sticking together no matter what. But my grandpa died at a young age, leaving behind my grandma to take care of a child alone when she was barely eighteen, how is that a happy ending for her? This isn’t true love. It cannot be.

My parents love each other but they were clearly not made for each other. Witnessing the endless fights and countless times when the marriage almost ended, I drew only one conclusion, that true love does not exist, not in real world.

And by the time I turned 25 and started earning decent money, I was totally content with myself living alone, more than happy to. After frequent pleas of my parents, I would say yes sometimes to the arrange marriage proposals they wanted me to go through, but just for their sake. As soon as I used to meet the guy, no matter how rich or how smart and good looking or how well behaved they were, I would say a straight no. That’s the beauty of “no”, once you learn to say it, you become addicted to it, use it more often, more often as you can.

But you know the thing about life is? It never goes the way you plan it.

That day when I met you, I never realised it would be you who would shatter my beliefs, my ideals or better to say, it would be you who would lull the demons my mind. I was not ready, I did not open my door for you but you barged in anyway. But as I got to know you more, I realized we were like the moon and the sun. Like the sun, you cleared all the gloomy clouds around my life, filling my cracks with sunlight. But you see darling, the moon and sun, they never meet, one has to go away for other to shine.

They say opposite attracts but how can this always be true? What about the broken souls? What happens when one damaged soul meets another one who’s hungry for love? You had enough scars of your own, you did not need to deal with mine.

And that’s how we realized that we were dysfunctional together. But that did not mean we have to be strangers. We can still be the sun and moon, you see, helping each other exist as a gentle well-wisher. And the connection between us was so raw and impossible to deny that we decided to stay in contact and even meet once in a while, I was okay with it.

If you have been lonely for a long time in your life, there is a point when you start to fear intimacy. But after you, after knowing you and realising that I would have to give that up, was difficult. I was hurt, but I knew that I would be fine again, after all I had been fine already for a long time, living on my own.

Now after all these years, I am a 45 year old woman owning my own restaurant chains in several places and as a head chef in the one in London, I can’t say that I am unhappy. Because I don’t regret anything, I don’t regret you. Staying in contact for this long, knowing that now you are 49, a successful writer in a big publishing company with one major bestseller novel published, and travelling across the world, I never thought that we made a mistake. Because now when I see my parents, old and supporting each other I think I know that maybe they were not made for each other but that doesn’t change the fact that they are in love with each other, always have been and always will be.

Once I asked my grandma, why she didn’t remarry and give herself another chance at love? She told me that sometimes there is a certain someone in your life, who will always love you no matter where they are. Their love will always be there with you for your whole life even if the person doesn’t stay. I didn’t realize her answer then. How could I? A cynic I was. But now I understand, I do. Because everyone is born with their own story, but their happy endings are different. Every story doesn’t end with a prince charming coming to rescue you. Every story doesn’t end with the king and queen living happily ever after or like Romeo and Juliet dying together. But that doesn’t mean that their story is incomplete. Every tale is beautiful and unique and complete in their own way. And everybody’s happy endings are also different, because sometimes you have to be your own saviour. And that might be my story, my happy ending. No matter what, no one in this life is left unloved. Every soul is loved by someone. So yes, I am now a firm believer that true love does exist but it is our hopeless yearning that we think that every true love always ends up with the two people being together, because true love is not about being together, it is about caring and loving the other person so much that the distance doesn’t matter. It does not stop or diminish your love, rather it makes you strong.